Don't You Know You're Beautiful?

How lovely it is spending time resting in this christmassy atmosphere after arriving home from a busy semester in school. I had a lot of difficulty straying from stress and staying focused on my thesis so with some down time its been nice to rethink just exactly why I want to write my senior thesis on authentic feminine beauty. The topic certainly has a lot of theology in it but it is not strictly academic. The fact is woman don't know they're beautiful and men often don't know women are beautiful either. Well, men know women are beautiful, there is just a temptation to only see aspects of beauty and not humanity. Let me explain - 

Recently I have been more aware of just how destitute the world is of wisdom. I recently read a blog article on MORF, which said a Dove study showed 4% of women considered themselves beautiful. Four! That's four in one hundred women who actually consider themselves beautiful. Moreover I  watched a sex trafficking awareness video making its way through Facebook and was horrified to see a reality I'd already known. Certainly sex trafficking is a grand example of just how objectified and ill treated women are but when statistics show that 20% of men (in the work place) are addicted to pornography, a $57.0 billion worldwide industry, objectifying women becomes a pretty ordinary day-in-day-out norm. Certainly pornography's popularity provides an easier availability to all boys and men (and ladies too) and makes way for minds conditioned with an ill understanding of true beauty and authentic love. 

I'm not going to lie, even with the healing I've experienced the battle is never totally won living in today's society. Beauty today, which is utterly misunderstood, does not encapsulate the entirety of a person, rather beauty is no longer about a beautiful person but about one's assets; the parts of the person. A common question among secular men today is, "are you a butt guy?" Or "are you a boob guy?" Beauty, for women, then becomes about how to be noticed. The importance of a woman's beauty reaches at her innate desire to be loved, adored and pursued and when she yearns with every fiber of her being to be noticed and loved and is overcome with impatience and desire she is tempted to turn towards those men who notice her quickly because of her "beautiful" assets. However, true beauty is not seen unless one looks with the eyes of authentic love and sees the entirety of the person rather than instant gratification - be it attention or sexual arousal. What I mean is is beauty cannot be purely seen or understood when it is exposed in such a way that actually distracts from its totality nor can it be purely seen or understood when beauty registers as sexual gratification rather than 'here is a person worthy of sacrificial love'. 

Humanity is beautiful, men and women alike. Innocent children, for example, are some of the most beautiful creatures we can behold. The love people can give and experience is beautiful too. Life and love are beautiful and they remind our souls where we came from and what we are made for - He who is Love. Women have a special role in being beautiful in a truly feminine sense, whether they deny it or not. A woman's features as well as a woman's heart are a joy to behold especially in the eyes and heart of a man; after all Adam didn't even know what he had coming for him and he exclaimed, "AT LAST!" at the sight of Eve. If we take the disturbing statistics and the harsh realities of our society and place the motives of those men's heart in a place of honor and respect for women, we find that men, like the first man, are in awe of women's beauty. Women therefore have a privilege of being the most alluring and beautiful creatures on earth, so much so that, as seen in my sad and disturbing examples, their beauty can actually lead men to sin if not upheld and respected by both parties. If women were not the crown of creation, in regards to beauty, women would not struggle with a burning desire to have their beauty be noticed and adored and men would not be so effected by feminine beauty.

The solution you ask? We cannot strip feminine beauty away from the dignity of the person. A woman is beautiful; her whole self and she is most especially beautiful when she loves with a genuine heart and holds herself with respect and honor and confidence knowing she is infinitely loved - especially loved by her creator who endowed her with a gift of beauty to be beheld and cherished by those who encounter her. When a man fails to see that, he does himself no justice and he dishonors her. When a woman fails to see that in herself, she unfortunately dishonors herself but also allows men the opportunity of dishonoring her as well.

What a treasure and what a gift it is to be a woman - I feel very honored to have such a role in the human race. To have the ability to reflect the beauty of God and the power to lead humanity, especially men to love and to God. Its a struggle for sure between modesty and simply loving with a pure and selfless heart. Theology of the Body explains that the creation of woman made man know himself through their difference and complimentarity. Woman still have an ability to help a man know himself but she has a duty to help him know himself as created in the image and likeness of his creator called for more than what this world has to offer. She has a great calling to help men not be blinded from authentic love by her beautiful body but to love her as a daughter of the king and to love her as the royalty that she is in order that he may love God in turn. Although the world thwarts, twists and skews the true meaning of authentic feminine beauty, making it nearly impossible for women to see that they are beautiful, no matter what, in some form or fashion God has called them to be his beauty on earth in a unique and powerful way. Open your heart, ladies so that your creator can reveal to you just how beautifully you have been made.